Roasted Roots

Wash and prepare vegetables by trimming the ends and cutting them lengthwise into finger sized pieces. If the beets are small, you can quarter them. Keeping the beets separate, place them into large bowls. Drizzle olive oil over the cut pieces, using about 2 Tablespoons. In the bowl with the parsnips and carrots, add the 1/4 cup of bourbon and heavily salt them, using at least 2 teaspoons.

Stir them well evenly coating them as best as possible. Bourbon, in this case, is used to aid the caramelization process. If you don’t have any handy, you can substitute 2 teaspoons of sugar, honey, or maple syrup. Place the beets into the baking pan first, distributing them evenly. Allowing the beets to cook a little before stirring them in with the other vegetables will preserve the colors of the parsnips and carrots, resulting in a much prettier dish.

Carefully distribute the remaining vegetables on top, and pepper them to taste. Even if you don’t like a lot of pepper, I recommend peppering them well. The small amount of spice will aid the in the flavor contrast of the sweet and savory dish. I use freshly ground pepper on a somewhat coarse grind.